White Castle

I’m (in) my own nail salon, watch­ing my paint dry.

The solvent evap­or­ates slowly, and I am left doing noth­ing, sus­pen­ded in between moments.

Some­thing this floaty, this airy, defies any attempt at grasp­ing.

White Castle plays, but what is White Castle? Surely we can find, some­where in the US, the phys­ical depos­its of the pro­cess of nail pol­ish dry­ing. A bur­ger, its con­stitu­ent parts almost sep­ar­ate, almost the Pla­tonic ideal of a bur­ger: hard to believe any­one would eat it. A build­ing. Someone, nev­er­the­less, eat­ing that bur­ger, inside that build­ing. The exper­i­ence of that moment. Is that White Castle?

Or is it the the bits that have evap­or­ated, the sub­lime hav­ing left the solid remains? A myth­ical White Castle, chased by those in search of the per­fect bur­ger in the per­fect moment. A cloud castle, com­posed of sounds and smells.

The min­im­al­ity of that which has evap­or­ated tells the story, impli­citly, of the messy, dirty, imper­fect, lovely real­ity below.

My nails are about done.